So it would stand to reason
that an event that happened exactly 50 years ago on July 9th
is also the largest of its kind ever recorded.

On July 9, 1958, the largest
wave in modern history occurred in Lituya Bay, on the northern
Southeast Alaska coast about halfway between Cape Spencer and
Yakutat.

Southeast Alaska Earthquake.
Scar at the head of Lituya Bay and wave damage on the north shore,
from southwest of Gilbert Inlet to La Chaussee spit. August 9,
1958. Photos Form a panorama
Photograph courtesy U.S. Geological Survey

Initially, the wave - generated by a landslide that itself was
generated by a massive earthquake that shook the region for more
than a thousand miles up and down the coast - reached a height
of more than 1,700 feet. It was still nearly 100 feet high when
it reached the mouth of the bay seven miles later.

In its path were three small
trolling boats taking advantage of the fact that Lituya Bay was
the closest anchorage to the lucrative Fairweather fishing grounds
offshore.

In fact, Lituya Bay is the
only secure anchorage along more than 100 miles of Gulf of Alaska
coast from just north of Cape Spencer to Yakutat. The entrance
to Lituya Bay is extremely dangerous, and should only be attempted
is short (10 to 20 minute) periods of slack water, according
to the United States Coast Pilot book series.

Despite that challenge, the
bay is often the refuge of choice when the weather gets bad along
the coast.

Interestingly enough, the weather
on July 9, 1958 was not the reason that three fishing vessels
chose to anchor up in Lituya Bay.

According to one of the surviving
fishermen, Howard Ulrich, it was a sunny day and the waters around
the mouth of the bay were calm.

"Fishing had been poor
on that memorable ninth day of July and I pulled my gear and
headed the Edrie for Lituya Bay early in the evening,"
Ulrich told the Alaska Sportsman Magazine in an article for its
October, 1958 issue. "all was smooth.it was a quiet and
peaceful anchorage."

Two other boats joined the
Edrie inside the bay, that night, the Badger and
the Sunmore. But they chose an anchorage on the other
side of the bay from the Edrie. When the wave came, two crews
would survive and one crew would not.

A History of Big Waves

The unusual geology of Lituya
Bay has lent itself to several large waves in the last 150 years.

The seven mile long, two mile
wide bay has two large glaciers and several large mountains rising
steeply from tidewater. It is only a few miles as the crow flies
from tidewater to high mountains like Crillion (12,726 feet)
and Fairweather (15,300 feet) making it a popular staging area
for climbers. In fact, two groups of Canadian climbers narrowly
missed being in the bay the night of July 9th. Had they been
camped at tidewater as planned, the wave's death toll would have
more than 20 rather than only two.

Trees washed out and
turned upslope by water at altitude of 1,720 feet. Small slides
occurred on steep slope at right during the 1958 earthquake,
but destruction of forest in middle and lower left part of view
is due mainly to water. Lituya district, Alaska Gulf region,
Alaska. Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Plate 7-A in
U.S. Geological Survey.
Photograph courtesy U.S. Geological Survey

The weather also plays a role in the bay as it gets a large amount
of precipitation - mostly rainfall. Some of the inland areas
along the coast between Lituya Bay and Yakutat have had more
than 300 inches of rain according to the National Weather Service
and the winter and spring of 1958 was a wet one throughout Southeast
Alaska. The ground in Lituya Bay - which frequently gets up to
150 inches of rain a year - was oversaturated even though it
was sunny that July.

The third factor was the massive
earthquakes that frequently topped 6 and 7 on Richter Scale in
the area.

A final factor was the deep
water - up to 800 feet - near the head of the bay. When earthquakes
or other events caused landslides, they would displace large
amounts of water sending it rushing toward the narrow mouth of
the bay and the open ocean.

Federal geologist Don Miller
was the foremost expert on Lituya Bay in the 1950s and the early
1960s. In his 1960 report, "Giant Waves in Lituya Bay Alaska."
he pointed out evidence of five "giant" waves created
primarily by land or glacier slides between 1853 and 1958.

Aerial view of Lituya
Bay, 1954, trimlines of the 1936 giant waves and the 1853-54
giant wave. Lateral moraines and the end moraine in the right
and left foreground record a recent advance of ice to the mouth
of the bay. Mount Crillon altitude 12,726 feet is the highest
peak on the skyline. Lituya district, Alaska Gulf region, Alaska.
September 16, 1954. Plate 3-A in U.S. Geological Survey.
Photograph courtesy U.S. Geological Survey

The 1853-54 wave was estimated at 395 feet, the 1874 wave at
80 feet, the 1899 wave at 200 feet, the 1936 wave at 490 feet
and the 1958 behemoth swept trees off a hillside at more than
1,720 feet.

In addition to those giant
waves, the waters of Lituya Bay had also been the site of several
other disasters involving both the native Tlingit tribes and
groups of American, British and French explorers and adventurers
from the 1780s into the Twentieth Century, according to Philip
Fradkin in his 2001 book "Wildest Alaska: Journeys of Great
Peril in Lituya Bay."

Most of these involved the
deadly, narrow entrance that featured tide rips and waters running
up to 13 knots in either direction. Most notable was a disaster
that cost French explorer Jean-Francois La Perouse more than
20 of his sailors. Fradkin also noted that Tlingit oral tradition
featured several stories of "giant" waves and mass
drownings in the bay.

Three Boats In the Bay

There were two commonly used
anchorages near the mouth of Lituya Bay on that July night in
1958. Ulrich and his eight-year-old son "Sonny" chose
to anchor about half a mile in from the mouth on the south side
of the bay in place called, appropriately enough "Anchorage
Cove."

Two other trolling boats, the
Sunmore (with Orville and Mickey Wagner on board) and
the Badger (operated by Bill and Vivian Swanson) anchored
up on the opposite side of the bay, just behind the nearly mile
long spit that extended most of the way across the mouth of the
bay. The opening itself was less than 300 yards across and most
of that water was too shallow for boats to cross. Some fishermen
estimate there may less than 50 feet of open water at times.

The Ulrichs had anchored up
just after 8 pm, while the other two boats - running partners
who both lived in Juneau - anchored up around 9 pm.

Around 8 pm, a plane took off
from near Cenotaph Island (so named after the drowning of the
20 French sailors in 1786). On board were 10 Canadians who had
just returned from the first Canadian ascent of Mount Fairweather.

Stump of living spruce
tree broken off by the giant wave at Harbor Point, mouth of Lituya
Bay. Brim of hat is 12 inches in diameter. Lituya district, Alaska
Gulf region, Alaska. Plate 5-B in U.S. Geological Survey.
Photograph courtesy U.S. Geological Survey

"The expedition was scheduled
to leave the following day, but the pilot of their Royal Canadian
Air Force amphibian arrived at 6 pm that night and told them
to pack immediately," Fradkin wrote in "Wildest Alaska."
"He was worried about the possibility of fog and wanted
to get the climbers back to Juneau that night. The climbers cursed
the pilot's nervousness. They missed dinner in a hurry to pack
and departed at 9 pm. Another party of climbers was due that
day by boat but they had been delayedHad the two groups proceeded
as planned, there would have been a total of 20 climbers camped
on the shoreline that night."

Fradkin noted that the Canadian
climbers weren't the only living things making a fortuitous getaway
from the bay.

"As the Canadian climbers
flew away, so did the nervous kittiwakes (that nested on the
cliffs of Cenotaph Island)," Fradkin wrote. "The gulls
ascended like so much confetti blown upward. The high intensity
alarm call of thousands of birds echoed through the still bay.
They passed over the Badger and splattered the boat with droppings.
Some crashed into the vessel's rigging and plummeted to the deck.
The Swansons were frightened."

Up and down the coast as far
as Yakutat and Hoonah observers would report similar odd behavior
by shore birds and other animals. Then, at approximately 10:16
pm, it happened.

"Cursing Myself For
Not Moving Sooner"

The quake was later determined
to be 8.3 on the earthquake scale and was centered 45 miles south
of Lituya in Cross Sound. It was felt strongly as far south as
Seattle and as far north as Anchorage. At Yakutat, 80 miles to
the north of Lituya, three people out berry picking died instantly
when a small island they were on immediately dropped more than
two dozen feet under the water. Later measurements determined
that a nearby mountain had risen more than 50 feet at the same
time.

Overall, the earth had moved
some 21 feet horizontally and 3.5 feet vertically along most
of the fault line. While most earthquakes last only a few seconds,
the initial length of the quake was later estimated at more than
two minutes by Don Miller.

Then Lituya Bay got hit with
the other shoe.

Miller - who was in Glacier
Bay at the time of quake and flew to Lituya the next day - determined
that less than two minutes after the initial tremor, the side
of an unnamed 5,616 foot peak on the east side of Gilbert Inlet
(at the head of the bay) plunged into the bay. At least 2,000
feet of rock fell.

"The noise was deafening,"
Fradkin wrote. "The violent impact of forty million cubic
yards of rock, ice and coarse soil weighing ninety million tonswas
heard 50 miles to the north. Ulrich said it sounded like an explosion."

With the first jolt, Bill Swanson
tumbled out of his bunk on the Badger. He later told the
Alaska Sportsman that the he could see even the highest mountains
shaking. Then he saw the Lituya Glacier appear to literally rise
up into the air.

"I know you can't ordinarily
see that glacier from where I was anchored," he was quoted
in the October, 1958 issue. "People shake their head when
I tell them I saw it that night. I can't help it if they don't
believe mebut I know what I saw that night."

From his vantage point, he
could also see the mountainside slide away and crash towards
the water. From his viewpoint on the other side of the bay, Ulrich
could see the wave rise up and devastate the forested hillside.

All three boat crews had been
woken up by the earthquake. But while the captains of the Badger
and Edrie were transfixed by the spectacle at the head
of the bay, the Wagners on the Sunmore jumped to immediate
action and got their boat headed out of the bay.

It proved to be a fatal decision.
Swanson reported seeing the Sunmore just about to turn
out into the entrance when it was caught by the wave and flung
over Harbor Point across the opening from the end of the spit.
All that was found later was an oil slick marking the spot where
the boat went down in deep water.

Ulrich told Alaska Sportsman
that he was "petrified" by the landslide and the wave
and didn't begin to act until he saw the wave, then still some
300 feet high engulf Cenotaph Island some two miles away from
his boat.

"I began to move then,"
he said. "And I moved fast, cursing myself for not moving
sooner."

" I Think We've Had
It. Goodbye"

He got a life jacket on his
son and started the engine. He started to pull the anchor and
found it unmovable.

"The wave (then estimated
at more than 75 feet high) was almost upon us and we were fastened
to the bottom with a heavy chain," Ulrich said. He surmised
that the quake had caused the anchor to get tangled on the bottom.
He let out all his extra chain, in hopes that it would be enough
to allow the boat to ride up and over the wave. Then he turned
the boat into the wave and held on.

Southeast Alaska Earthquake,
July 10, 1958. Wave damage on the south shore of Lituya Bay,
from Harbor Point to the spur southwest of Crillon Inlet. August
9, 1958. Photos mdj01247 through mdj01261 form a sequence of
fifteen photographs.
Photograph courtesy U.S. Geological Survey

"As the Edrie began her almost perpendicular ascent to the
crest of the wave, the chain snapped," Ulrich said, adding
that he wanted to get a message out so his wife in Pelican would
eventually find out her husband and son had died. "There
seemed to be no hope for survivalI grabbed the handset of my
radiophone and yelled into it: 'Mayday! Mayday! This is the Edrie
in in Lituya Bay. All hell has broken loose in hereI think we've
had it. Goodbye.' "

But the luck that had abandoned
the Wagners was still on Ulrich's side. At the top of wave, he
regained enough control of his boat to hold on and steer around
the debris being carried by the wave. A few seconds later, the
worst had passed.

He sent out another message
saying he thought they'd made it through. Immediately, other
boats outside Lituya began radioing back. But, Ulrich noted,
the silence from the Badger and the Sunmore was
ominous.

Just about the time that Bill
Swanson saw the wave engulf the Sunmore as it tried to
escape, the wave - estimated to be approximately 80 feet high
- hit his boat and carried it over the La Chaussee Spit and dumped
it stern first into the open ocean.

"We went way over the
trees and I looked down on rocks as big as an ordinary house
as we crossed the spit," Swanson told the Alaska Sportsman.
"We were way up above them. It felt like we were in a tin
can and somebody was shaking it."

After the crash landing, the
boat immediately began to sink. They were surrounded by acres
of wood debris - including a large tree that smashed through
the pilot house and broke several of Swanson's ribs - but managed
to get into eight foot skiff with only their underclothes on,
according to Fradkin's book. At nearly midnight, they were found
by the crew of the vessel Lumen which was picking its
way through the miles of debris looking for signs of survivors
in the pitch dark.

After surviving the giant Lituya
wave, Ulrich continued to fish but then quit the business a year
later. As recently as 2004, he was still reliving the events
of July 9, 1958. He wrote a brief story that appeared in Esquire
magazine about that night under the title "What it Feels
Like to Survive a Tsunami."

The Swansons eventually got
a replacement boat, but Vivian - whose hair reportedly turned
gray overnight after the Lituya incident - refused to go fishing
with Bill again, according to Fradkin.

On the night of May 26, 1962.
Bill Swanson returned to Lituya Bay for the first time since
the wave in 1958. Shortly after passing through the narrow entrance
to the bay, he suffered a massive heart attack and died.